Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday April 05, 2010 @06:12PM
from the plays-nicely-with-others dept.

oneone writes "Canonical is bringing its Ubuntu One cloud service (which we discussed last month) to handheld devices with a new mobile contact synchronization feature that is powered by Funambol. Canonical's Ubuntu One application for the iPhone is now available from the iTunes Music Store. Android and other mobile operating systems will be supported with Funambol's standard client application. The mobile sync feature is currently in the beta testing stage but will be generally available to Ubuntu One subscribers when Ubuntu 10.04 is released later this month. Canonical says that it is boosting its Ubuntu One server infrastructure in order to support what it anticipates will be record loads."

I've also tried Funambol, but it uses too much memory for my P3 "server". Trying SyncEvolution now, the last betas include HTTP server support, although it's experimental.

But besides "trusting" Google, doesn't it require special apps? I thought Google services didn't support SyncML. My Nokia comes with integrated an SyncML "client", I'm not installing yet another client just for syncing. Might as well sign up for a real syncml service.

Google is "free" so to speak, but not exactly. I recently got a Google MyTouch and while entering all my contact information, I got to thinking what google has with this -- it has the ability to cross reference and correlate the contacts of millions of people, even with mug shots of them. And there is nothing you can really do about it if someone you know puts you in their contact list. A person can try to protect their own privacy online, but that person has no control over what their acquaintances do w

If that where the case, then couchdb is not the smartest way to do it, considering that each user has it's own DB. Cross-referencing anything from user to user is incredibly expensive (load-wise) and hard to do;)Canonical could be after world domination and selling data to the CIA, or we could be trying to provide a valuable service to users. Who knows.

So, basically I'll need an iTunes account. No way around this huh? I wonder if there are app store licence issues with publishing to the iTunes app store and Cydia.I just don't want an itunes account:(

Are you asking about the market finding it acceptable or about it being socially acceptable? Your post isn't very, and maybe it's because, and in some cases, and in some places, this is acceptable, your comma use is, and I mean no offense, confusing, clear.

"Always-on" is still substantially a feature of teenagers, girls especially, twitter enthusiasts, and the poor bastards responsible for keeping uptimes up; but I'd say that "always synchronized" is, if anything, an underserved demand.

At present, if you want your data to be there when you need it to be, you pretty much have to be a bit of a gearhead(not a huge gearhead by any means; knowing about dropbox is way less techy than having your own git repo or secure WebDAV share, or whatever) or you have to engage in frankly infuriating amounts of error-prone manual labour.

File propagation among the people generally is still(even among the youth) at the level of "emailing it to myself", with all the version errors and minor fuckups that that occasions. Synchronizing bookmarks? Pretty much doesn't happen. Cell contacts? unless you can swap the SIM, or have them do it for you at the store, people pretty much just retype them. Bloody dark ages stuff. Even the cases that should work by now(DLNA media sharing in a closed LAN, all devices trusted, is still rather rough around the edges). Even the trivial case of somebody who has a desktop and a notebook/netbook still isn't really there yet. You either sign up for something like Dropbox, which is easy and cheap/free; but depends on an internet connection and is potentially privacy problematic, or you drop fairly big money(Windows Home Server/Small Business Server), or you do it the gearhead way(any one of dozens of permutations of NFS or SMB, or webDAV, or a revision control mechanism, plus a helping of Linux Fu), or you basically just let the two drift apart, occasionally using a flash drive or emailing something to yourself. Pitiful.

Not everybody wants to be connected all the time; but I'm not sure I can think of anybody who wouldn't like having their data and files and bookmarks and whatnot there when they want them, wherever "there" happens to be(within the limits of privacy and security, of course, for the few people who think about that stuff).

File propagation among the people generally is still(even among the youth) at the level of "emailing it to myself", with all the version errors and minor fuckups that that occasions.

True, though I've noticed that more and more people use those "online disk" services like SkyDrive.

Personally, I just bought Jungle Disk [jungledisk.com] subscription, which gives me an SMB share on top of Amazon S3 with pretty much no strings attached (you pay for monthly traffic, and you pay for storage used, and that's it). It also has a nifty client which can auto-sync local files with remote drive, which does two-way sync if you want it.

Synchronizing bookmarks? Pretty much doesn't happen.

Not until recently, but this seems to be changing rapidly as Chrome (which has book

Just so everybody is aware, the servers are quite overloaded at the moment, so expect all kinds of timeouts. We didn't expect so many testers:)We will be slowly bringing it back in it's feet, so patience is welcomed.

Not that I give a rat's ass about anything mobile. Why would I want to put anything into a "cloud" that I don't own or control? I didn't see anything about encryption, and without a high level of encryption that only I own the keys to, it would be not for me.

This is exactly my point. As far as I am concerned, until there are standards restricting these guys on how they lock everything down when you upload your stuff to the cloud you might as well be posting it on YouTube

No. We partnered with Funambol to provide this service, and it carries a significant cost to both develop and maintain and scale this specific service, as the announcement says.Supporting hundreds of different mobile phones is an incredibly expensive task, and on top of that we've added a layer that saves those contacts to couchdb and replicates them locally for you, to be used with any application you wish.While we all love and use free software, it's completely unreasonable to demand that services be provided for free. The service also provides a 30 day free trial, where you can perform a one-time sync if you wish to have a backup of your contacts.

I personally believe that allowing people to sync their contacts from almost any mobile phone into a Linux desktop is a huge step forward.

There are some SyncML servers, like https://www.mobical.net/ [mobical.net] [mobical.net] . They seem to be able to provide the services for free

Free to you, but not because it doesn't cost them. Their business model allows them to offer you a free service because you're their Guinea Pig. What they learn from servicing you, they sell on to other people. It took me about 30 seconds to find this explanation on their web site:

"The purpose of Mobical.net is to introduce people all over the world to the benefits of using Tactel’s product Mobical for mobile synchronization. Tactel doesn't make any profit from this service; we only use it to develop, test and market new mobile synchronization technology that we sell to our customers: network operators, handset vendors, service providers, etc. That is how we can offer a free service and still make a business, and that is why we are committed to ensuring the privacy, integrity and security of your data."

Canonical's business model is different and so they need to charge for the infrastructure (servers, disks, network, etc) required to provide this service. As they said, they have no problem with free software, but free services are a different beast all together. Don't be a tight arse. If you want them to succeed, then support them !!

But my point was not that mobical was doing it from the kindness of the hearts, it's: if there are companies who offer the service for free, why does Canonical think they can get people to pay for it? I think most people will prefer to be mobical's guinea pig or better yet, they'll use Google's service [google.com]*

* btw, isn't it odd that Google's own service supports every mobile except Android?

I personally believe that allowing people to sync their contacts from almost any mobile phone into a Linux desktop is a huge step forward.

Not really. gmail or syncml could already do this, and do it for free (at least, the synchronization worked fine between my Nokia E71, my Droid, and my linux boxes). Your service apparently can't do it for free, and can't even stay up right now. May be, you just meant to say "a huge step backward", so if that's the case, I'd say yes, this service is taking at least a couple of little steps backwards.

I'll be happy to cough up some dough for quality services that integrate well with my free Ubuntu desktop. PIM-syncing type operations have been a headache for me, and I am sure other users, and it's excellent to see the need being addressed. Although I won's need this, as I'm all Googly now, I look forward to trying out the music store.

From the www.ubuntu.com front page: "Ubuntu will always be free of charge, along with its regular enterprise releases and security updates." Plus, as another poster noted, the beauty of open source means that you can fork (see CentOS).

When you find a better way for a company to make money than by having people pay them for a product, let me know. (And counterfeiting does not count.) Besides, they've already promised [ubuntu.com] that "Ubuntu will always be free of charge," so I don't know what you're concerned about.

When you find a better way for a company to make money than by having people pay them for a product, let me know.

OK, you asked...

Lots of companies make money by selling us a "license" to use the products they provide, rather than letting us buy the product itself. It's becoming more common, so apparently, someone out there has found a "better way for a company to make money than by having people pay them for a product".

Lots of companies make money by selling us a "license" to use the products they provide, rather than letting us buy the product itself. It's becoming more common, so apparently, someone out there has found a "better way for a company to make money than by having people pay them for a product".

Ok, you guessed wrong.

Sure, Google, Volkswagen, Boeing, 7-Eleven, Ace Hardware, Sherwin-Williams, and countless others write or customize software. Some even return improvements back to the FOSS community. However, these companies use software to make their money. The list goes on and together they make up the GDP.

Lots of companies, perhaps in absolute numbers 'sell' software. But compared to the companies that make their money in other ways, those that sell a license are functionally zero percent

Those examples support the point I made that software is a means to the end and that 'selling' it is largely irrelevant to the GDP.

Apple sells hardware with software as an enabler, some nasty blobs on top of FOSS. The music and games [wikipedia.org] industries sell data, not software. So let that meme about 'selling' software die. It's done. Stick a fork in it.

No one 'buys' software or 'licenses', that's 1980's talk. Software is a tool that you download to get your real money-making work done.

Then what do you call it when people buy apps that serve no money-making purpose for the end user for their phones and other devices?

Usually it is called
stupid [businessinsider.com]. (Re-)read my previous comment. You will find in absolute numbers many such stupid practices. However, in terms of percentage of the GDP in any given country, it is insignificant enough to be inappropriate to bring up.

Most software is written by companies and agencies as a means to an end. Some write FOSS. Some build upon FOSS and even return improvements back to the FOSS community. These companies use software to make their money. The list goes on and together they mak

When you find a better way for a company to make money than by having people pay them for a product, let me know. (And counterfeiting does not count.) Besides, they've already promised [ubuntu.com] that "Ubuntu will always be free of charge," so I don't know what you're concerned about.

1 - Ever hear of support? Product for free, support for $. Lots of companies solely thrive on this concept of support ( of others products ). They often call it 'professional services'. I suggest you look it up sometime. There is no reason it cant work if you support your own products that you give away.

2 - Promises from companies have been broken before. Quite often actually. You might want to trust some corporate entity who's directors can change and thus the direction of the company, but i dont.

Promises from companies have been broken before. Quite often actually. You might want to trust some corporate entity who's directors can change and thus the direction of the company, but i dont.

And the moment that Ubuntu becomes nonfree and/or pay-to-play (either in a de jure or de facto sense), I have my data backed up. I'll move away without a regret or a second thought. And yes, free (free as in beer AND speech) software has existed for quite some time. No one needs a company for it. If you can figure a way to make money off it, great. If you can't, then to be honest, fuck yourself. It's not there for that purpose, it just allows for that purpose if you can pull it off.

That, however, is the exact reason that I absolutely insist on local storage of my data. If you control the data that I generate using my software, you control my use of it. I will not concede that control to even an entity that is now entirelty benevolent. That data is mine. If I wish to migrate it away, for any reason from malevolence to a simple wish to experiment, that's my right to do as well. I will not allow external storage or control of critical data.

1 - Ever hear of support? Product for free, support for $. Lots of companies solely thrive on this concept of support ( of others products ). They often call it 'professional services'. I suggest you look it up sometime. There is no reason it cant work if you support your own products that you give away.

And Canonical offers that, if fact IIRC it was the first commercial offering Canonical did. But they are not a 'professional services' company, they are a software company with more than a handful of (320+ according to wikipedia I just checked) employees which means they need to, just like every other company, try many avenues to make money to keep those people employed. And quite frankly as a linux admin myself I have (like many of us) a superiority complex that tells me I would never need to purchase su

And how do you charge for support when it is a rather simple and small app (on the user side) that is written well enough to be essentially support free (with community support that answers any questions faster than you could pick up the phone and read in your credit card info for paid support)?

1 - Ever hear of support? Product for free, support for $. Lots of companies solely thrive on this concept of support ( of others products ). They often call it 'professional services'. I suggest you look it up sometime. There is no reason it cant work if you support your own products that you give away.

Congratulations, now a company has to create two enticing products instead of one.

the app can be -any- license -including- GPL, providing that you can fulfill all GPL prerequisites.

If you can't, because e.g. GPL contradicts iPhone developer license, then you are not legal to release it under GPL. If you still do - tough luck, it's in violation of both and it's up to the court what to do with this legal monstrosity. Of course you can always hope nobody tries to assert either of them.

Anyway, GPL spreads virally through source code, not through transmission protocols. It can "spawn" instead

I guess that's where I'm going wrong - I have excellent Karma, and get mod points about once a year:/

You just need to look at the moderation on an Apple story, to see how bad an idea a "-1 Wrong" moderation would be, although I suppose it's already the case that people use Flamebait/Troll/Off-topic to mod down anything they don't like (in this case, doesn't support Apple). I have to browse these stories at -1.

Well the summary is kind of badly worded to make it seem like Funambol only has one app. So instead of snarking at him for what seems like an honest (but mistaken) comment, here's a link to Funambol's Android client: http://www.funambol.com/solutions/android.php [funambol.com]

The whole thing make very little sense really. Funambol has had an iPhone app since 2008, so I am unsure why Ubuntu is writing their own. Maybe to get some press? Maybe for some unknown technical reason? Hard to say. The Ars link makes it sou

He may not have RTFS, but this is a perfect example of how people end up being misled that things are only available on the Iphone, because anything "On The Iphone" gets pulled up for the daily Slashdot Iphone story, whilst other platforms are ignored. I did RTFS, and I ask what are these "other mobile operating systems"? Does it include the remainder 95% of the market, e.g., support for Symbian?